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The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege QUOTES

The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege QUOTES

1 " The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White People's Burden is to civilize ourselves. "

― Robert Jensen , The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege

2 " Whiteness–the whole constellation of practices, beliefs, attitudes, emotions that are mixed up in being white–is the problem. Whiteness is degraded and depraved[…] To the degree that we accept any of the meaning that the dominant society gives to whiteness, we white people are degraded and depraved. "

― Robert Jensen , The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege

3 " We're all in the race game, so to speak, either consciously or unconsciously. We can overtly support white-supremacist racial projects. We can reject white supremacy and support racial projects aimed at a democratic distibution of power and a just distribution of resources. Or we can claim to not be interested in race, in which case we almost certainly will end up tacitly supporting white supremacy by virtue of our unwillingness to confront it. In a society in which white supremacy has structured every aspect of our world, there can be no claim to neutrality. "

― Robert Jensen , The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege

4 " Jokes are funny only in context. There is no such thing as abstract clever word play. Words have meaning in the world in which we live, not in the abstract. Take away the politics, and there is no joke. The joke wouldn't make any sense. if the joke is funny, it's funny precisely because it's racist and sexist. "

― Robert Jensen , The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege